You and I both know the truth. You just don't admit it.
When distilled down to its basest elements, con drama Focus is a light and airy attempt to hearken back to the days of movie star vehicles that require nothing more than mega movie star wattage and a smooth smile to keep their exploits afloat. Even when viewed at surface level, there’s nothing more to the…
Someone’s been watching “Pi.” With the grim black and white photography, slightly disheveled protagonist, explored thriller territory, talk of mathematical equations, and a search for secrets revealed by such equations, the influence of Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 debut are all over Richie Mitchell’s sci-fi-ish feature S.I.N. Theory. But based on this one effort, Mitchell is no…
Once upon a time, back in the Light Ages of Hollywood genre filmmaking (aka the 80s), the ancient fantasy picture was a thing of popular beauty. They weren’t all classics, but the memorable likes of “Conan the Barbarian,” “The Beastmaster,” “Willow,” “The Princess Bride,” “Legend,” “The Neverending Story,” “Dragonslayer,” “The Last Unicorn,” and “The Dark…
With each successive movie, Andy and Lana Wachowski prove that their imagination is practically unrivalled in Hollywood and that their awesome ability to bring that imagination to lush, limitless life puts them in the company of cinema’s greatest modern magicians. So it seems only fair that when the sibling team takes on the space opera…
The tragic decay of a brilliant woman’s mind is given a gentle, poignant examination in Still Alice, a deeply moving and beautifully minimalized drama that sweetly takes the high road and finds in its protagonist’s struggle room for love and courage. Adapted from the novel by Lisa Genova and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash…
Photography, both still and moving, is given a refreshing challenge in Wei Hu’s cleverly original short Butter Lamp, which concerns itself with a professional photographer’s efforts to take pictures of Tibetan nomads against a wide range of evocative backdrops. The entire movie uses the same camera setup with cuts between each group’s photo session. So…
There’s walking in circles and then there’s walking in circles the Paul Thomas Anderson way. Whatever that means. Not that it matters. Who cares, anyway? A flippant attitude for a flippant movie. Except that Inherent Vice, Anderson’s latest and possibly his worst, is 150 minutes of flippancy, a wacky stumble into safe, though awfully off-putting…
